Paxton's People Trivia Quiz

Answer: Annie

'Annie' was the subject of "When Annie Took Me Home" and "Annie's Going to Sing Her Song".
Paxton attributed the Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel as an influence for "Annie's Going to Sing Her Song".

Answer: Jimmy Newman

"Get up, Jimmy Newman! They won't take my word.
I said you sleep hard, but they're shaking their heads.
Get up, Jimmy Newman, and show them you heard!
Ah, Jimmy just show them you're sleeping!"

The songs covered the absurdity of war; its horror; and its pointlessness. Tom Paxton was in the forefront of those singers who helped change the mindset of the American people about their country's involvement in Vietnam.

Answer: Marie

After lamenting why the tired worker could not respond to his lover's wiles, the hero had a change of mind:

"Not tonight, Marie, the full moon shines
I'm showing all the danger signs
To hell with rest, I'll thump my chest
I'll swing across the room on vines

"Marie, I don't care where or how
Marie, you've purely had it now
Some night you won't get through to me
By God, but not tonight, Marie."

Answer: Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk - The Mayor of MacDougall Street - was a friend of Tom Paxton and many others who flocked to Greenwich Village in the early 1960s. The gravelly-voiced Van Ronk was slightly older and moving through folk to blues at the time. Van Ronk, June 30, 1936 to February 10, 2002, was a tremendous influence on all.

The movie "Inside Llewyn Davies" (2013) was loosely based on his life. The references here are to the songwriters Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. The Clancys were the Irish brothers Paddy, Tommy and Liam and their co-singer Tommy Makem.

Answer: Clarissa Jones

"[CHO:]
Clarissa Jones where are you going,
It's cold and the wind is blowing through your bones.
And where, where, where is your man, Clarissa Jones?"

This was Paxton's story of a woman struggling to make ends meet in a low-paid job. It was, as he put it in his songbook "The Honor of Your Company" also the story of a man barely out of the ghetto himself forced to evict a woman he might at one time have counted a neighbour.

Answer: Cindy

"Now Cindy went South and took the cure,
"This time, Honey, I'm straight for sure".
Went to the corner to the grocery store,
You were gone ten minutes and I know you scored,
And I know you scored"

Paxton later wrote: "I could see from Greenwich Village street life numerous examples of people who'd been lost for years before they ever saw a drug - damaged and totally vulnerable when it came into their lives." ['The Honor of Your Company' Cherry Lane
Music Company 2000.]

Answer: Mississippi John Hurt

The heyday of John Hurt's career was in the 1920s, but he seemingly got lost to music for many years until, in the 1960s, a new generation of folkies 'rediscovered' him. "John had only a few years of life left to him at this time, but we should all spend our last days getting the love and respect that he received," Paxton later wrote.

Answer: Billy

"Who's passing dreams around this morning bright and early
Might be better if he'd stayed in bed
Maybe he ought to let it be, find something else to do
God help me, I've been dreaming too."

Billy, Cynthia (a would-be ballet dancer) and Leroy (a smashed-up race driver) were the subjects of the song.
I know of only one recording that it appears on, and Paxton very rarely sang it in concert. Still, it is a personal favourite of mine. (Make of that what you will, psychiatrists.)

Answer: Phil Ochs

"I know I'm gonna spend the rest of my lifetime wondering why,
You found yourself so badly hurt you had to die."

Paxton and Ochs were fellow travellers musically, and at times literally; taking their songs to the striking miners of Hazard County and the pro Civil Rights campaigners of just about anywhere in the South. The Vietnam War gave both a vein of subject matter. When the war ended, though, Ochs found it difficult to move away from his 'protest singer' acclaim. He was also bipolar, and died by suicide on April 9th 1976 at the age of just 35.

Answer: Victoria

Paxton recalled that he made up the song about a total stranger he saw dining alone in a New York City coffee house. "I named her Victoria and gave her a life she probably wouldn't have recognised," he later wrote.

Answer: Johnny

"First time Johnny flashed his gun,
Everybody backed off fast.
Everybody treated him differently, then.
Johnny felt safe at last.
Johnny had a gun and everybody knew.
Everybody left him alone.
Till he bumped a kid who was coming down the stairs,
And the kid had a gun of his own."

In this tale, Johnny shot the other kid dead. His parents still worked long hours, but only got to see Johnny in a detection centre where, as Paxton put it "his feet don't touch the floor."

To put Paxton's song in context, this was reported in 'The Daily Telegraph' in October 2014: "More than 1,200 weapons including firearms and Taser stun guns were confiscated from schoolchildren in New York last year.
"Figures released by the New York Police Department (NYPD) show that the most common weapon seized from pupils were knives, including folding blades designed to look like credit cards.
"Nine guns were confiscated along with 41 BB air guns and various blades such as knives, box-cutters and razors."

Answer: Huey

"All of the poets look for Huey
Soon as they come to town
He never says he likes their poems
But he never puts them down
Fifteen minutes at the corner table
Under the poster of Betty Grable
Is enough to send them happily away
From the King of the Cat Cafe"

A Paxton song just for the fun of it.

Answer: Stephen Biko

Stephen Bantu Biko was born on December 18 1946 in Ginsberg Township, South Africa and died on September 12 1977 in prison in Pretoria, South Africa. Throughout his life Biko was an activist and the South African authorities feared his popularity. He was banned from public speaking. On August 18 1977 he was arrested and a period of interrogation and torture followed. He fell into a coma, but instead of taking him to a nearby hospital, the authorities placed him in a Land Rover for a 750-mile drive to Pretoria.
As Tom Paxton related it:
"There was no one on the journey who could help the man survive it,
And the medical equipment was just one bottle of water.
Ah, ah.
When they reached Pretoria prison they brought no medical records with them,
And they said, He might be faking, it's a hunger strike he's staging.
Ah, Africa!
Ah, Africa!

Stephen Biko in Pretoria was laid down upon a mattress.
On the stone floor of a prison, and he died his lonely death there..."

Answer: Gary Hart

"Well he met her at a party and her name was Donna Rice.
She was Gary's kind of women, she was pure Miami vice.
She thought he was Gary Collins and could get her on T.V.,
She suggested 'Monkey Business', and the rest is history."

And if the editor will allow it, the chorus:

"So he went into the politics game.
Oh he went into the politics game.
Warren Beatty told him, lookee,
You can get a lot of nookie,
If you get into the politics game"

'Monkey Business' was the name of a yacht.

Gary Hart was born in Kansas in 1936 and was a Democratic Party Senator for Colorado from 1975 to 1987. He was twice a presidential candidate, in 1984 and 1986. His career was dogged with controversy after the Miami Herald broke the story that he had had an affair with a woman called Donna Rice. He denied it, but the evidence was overwhelming and he withdrew from the race.

Disclaimer: This is a fun quiz. It is not intended to suggest that any of the 'wrong' answers in this question engaged in any questionable personal romantic dalliances.
As for the 'right' answer, I claim the First Amendment.

Answer: Midge

Paxton met Margaret Ann Cummings in the Gaslight cafe in New York City in 1963. Two weeks later he proposed. They were married within eight months. Sadly, Midge died in June 2014. Jennifer and Katy were their daughters.